On A High Note And More

The 2014-15 Season of the Huntsville Symphony is ending on a high note, well actually on many high notes. The amazing Elina Vahala
http://elinavahala.com
is back to play the powerful and extremely difficult Violin Concerto #2 by Bela Bartok. Our last classical concert opens with Les preludes by Franz Liszt and closes with Brahms’ Symphony No.1.
Just this week HSO has announced its 2015-16 season. Please click on this link to find out about all the details
http://hso.org
My busy 15-16 season continues. Next week I am off to San Jose, CA to conduct a choral program with Symphony Silicon Valley. Right after that I jump into the production of Doctor Faust by Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni at the Budapest Opera, then back to the US to conduct the Rochester Philharmonic. Stay tuned! Also do not forget to Tune In on WLRH tomorrow morning 9AM EST to listen to Ginny Kennedy and myself talking about the Saturday concert and about the next season of HSO.
http://wlrh.org
In the meantime here is the review of my concert with the Omaha Symphony from last week for your reading pleasure.
http://omaha.com

mysterious; cat-like

The title of the post is from the score of Michael Torke’s Tahiti. This instruction can be found in the first clarinet part of the 7th movement. Needless to say that my cat-lover musicians immediately started loving the piece, not that it is any difficult to love it without the cat reference.
Here are the program notes for the piece from the composers website and a link to the site itself.

“Each of the movements reminisces a feeling of the individual islands that make up the Society Islands in the South Pacific, which we generally refer to as Tahiti.
A certain humidity, along with the lush landscape, water-life, white sand, and palm trees brings relief, a kind of peace to a hurried soul.
Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, sees it this way: “For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”
The movements grow from a melodic idea (rather than a rhythmic or harmonic idea, like much of my other music) and undergoes a development; the first and third movements have the most extended treatment.
A bias of orchestration is to limit the string writing to four parts, with a pair of woodwinds doubling the top part, much in the way Bach does in his Orchestral Suites.”

http://www.michaeltorke.com

The last sentence of the program notes above gave me the idea of the program for our third and final Casual Classics this season. I picked movements 1, 4, 6 and 7 from Torke’s composition and inserted them into Bach’s Orchestral Suite #1 in C. My goal with this year’s Casual Classics was to rediscover alternative concert formats and discover unusual concert venues around town. After a dinner-concert setting at the Early Works Museum and an acoustical action piece at the Depot Roundhouse (see earlier post “Pre-Super-bowl Brass Attack”) we are doing an “uninterrupted stream of music” at the Flying Monkey Theater at Lowe Mill.
http://www.lowemill.net

Billions of people now around the world listen to music on their iPods, smart phones, tablets and MP3 or MP4 devices. We all know the SHUFFLE button. Well, this concert is going to be exactly like when you push SHUFFLE and let your device stream you your favorite music. All right, I am cheating, since I did create a carefully thought out order for how the Bach and the Torke movements alternate… But still, I got the idea from my own iPod and also from search engines on net-radios where the “free-association” of human programmed algorithms provide endless entertainment.

The Season That Opens Twice

This is the season that opens twice. The first half of the first concert of 2013-14 starts with Brahms: Academic Festival Overture. The second half of the first concert of 2013-14 starts with Brahms: Tragic Overture. Having the longest continuously operating symphony orchestra in the state of Alabama alone calls for celebration. I also think that number 59 is just as nice a number as 60 (yes, we are already getting ready for a great season of celebration!). The concert will end with the mind-blowing piece of Leos Janacek entitled Sinfonietta. 9 extra trumpets (12 all together) and some other additional brass instruments are joining the HSO to finish the concert with a big bang. In the first half the great Robert McDuffie is joining the forces of the string section along with harp and percussion to play Bernstein’s Serenade. It is a real treat an tons of fun to make chamber music with Robert.
Check out his website here:
http://www.robertmcduffie.com

Brahms, Bernstein, Brahms, Janacek
Check out Huntsville Symphony website here:
http://www.hso.org
Listen to WLRH Radio tomorrow (Friday) morning for a pre-recorded interview with Ginney Kennedy about this concert and the upcoming season.
Let “The Season of Personalities” begin!

YOUTH Concerts, Love & LUST

Yes, I am getting better at coming up with catchy headlines. 🙂 Just finished the fourth show of our Youth/ Family Concert series. On the program: Mozart Magic Flute Overture, Mendelssohn Violin Concerto 1st Movement/ Elgar Cello Concerto 1st Movement (alternating, solos played by two concerto competition winners), Britten Young Persons’ Guide To The Orchestra [in honor of the Britten Anniversary]. It is always a lot of fun to play for 4th graders and the families on Saturday (this is a FREE concert every year). We had a great crowd especially considering that it is SNOWING today in Huntsville, AL.
This Sunday at 3PM we are doing our third and final concert of the Casual Classics Series at Randolph School. On the program: Debussy Music for the Songs of Bilitis [narrated by Ginny Kennedy from WLRH]
http://www.wlrh.org
and Luciano Berio Folksongs
Karen Bentel sings the solo. She also plays 2nd flute with the Huntsville Symphony.
Ginny Kennedy and myself will do a casual chat about the theme and the pieces. As usual there is no intermission, and there is a meet and great with snack afterwords.
Check out the program notes here:
http://www.hso.org